Successful survey research requires best-practice items and scales. GESIS assists researchers by providing empirically tested measurement instruments in the Collection of Items and Scales for the Social Sciences (ZIS) and by developing new measurement instruments. We also advise researchers on the development, evaluation and selection of measurement instruments for the social sciences.

the documentation of their theoretical background, development, and quality criteria,

while upholding established scientific standards.

We publish English, German and multilingual instruments as well as information on their development, quality criteria and theoretical background. If instruments have been implemented in publicly available surveys, their documentation is linked to publicly accessible datasets. Our main focus is on measurement instruments – both newly developed and established instruments – that can be implemented in heterogeneous samples for surveys in the social sciences. The published measurement instruments are empirically tested, and their quality criteria are fully documented. The Collection of Items and Scales for the Social Science (ZIS) is an open-access service. All published instruments can be freely downloaded and used for the purpose of non-commercial research (only).

ZIS currently contains more than 250 survey instruments for the social sciences, e.g. items for measuring political attitudes or short scales for capturing psychological variables (such as personality).

Acquire new data: Letting other researchers use your scale will boost the volume of data on your instrument.

Quality:

Each submission will be reviewed. The objective of reviewing to to optimize the quality of your publication. ZIS documentations are meant to observe the quality standardsfor the development, application, and evaluation of measurement instruments in social science survey research by the RatSWD and the test evaluation system by the test board of the Federation of German Psychologists' Associations.

Criteria for publication in ZIS are:

Availability: Can the measurement instrument be used free of charge?

Relevance: Is the instrument relevant for the social sciences?

Integrity: Does the documentation cover information about the theoretical background, development, and quality criteria of the instrument?

Topicality: Has the scale been empirically tested recently with a heterogeneous sample?

Submission:

Template: Please use the template (.docx) for documenting your instrument.

Guidance: Further instructions (German only) can be found in the ZIS Publication Guide. Use the offer to link to public or shared datasets or to publish them with GESIS datorium.

Whereas the aforementioned items and scales have been published in German, the items are now also available in English. In near future they will be published, accompanied by evidence on measurement quality and comparability with the German source.